Last year I quit my job to travel from London to Athens. In the weeks leading up to my trip, I scavenged travel blogs, seeking scraps of tourism enlightenment. Suitcase or backpack duffel, which burden would I choose? At what point does one have too much underwear? Could I walk a mile in those shoes? Packing loomed over me like an unanswerable kōan. I prayed for a Mean Girls moment in which the culmination of all my efforts would produce clarity. I would suddenly understand, “The limit does not exist!” Of course, the limit did exist in the form of a 29” x 20” x 10” suitcase size restriction. I micromanaged every aspect of my trip, but I was not prepared for the litany of unforeseen obstacles I encountered.

As I learned at Heathrow Airport, sometimes the unforeseen is just your own incompetence. Grinning like an idiot at 7:40 a.m., I handed my passport to the UK Border Force officer. I’d been to Canada a few times as a kid and I’d been to Jamaica, but I’d never needed a passport. There I was, waiting expectantly for my stamp, like a toddler with an autograph book at Disney World, and the Immigration officer was just staring back at me. When I opened my carryon bag to retrieve the information he asked for, the zipper snagged and I could hear everyone in “the queue” behind me groan in exasperation. In my haste at Newark Airport, I’d stuffed all my travel documentation into my checked bag, which was now waiting for me just past the apathetic gatekeeper. All I had on me was an itinerary listing all the places I would be staying during my trip. He actually stepped down from his podium to zip my bag and physically remove me from his life after reluctantly stamping my passport. Clearly I was too inept to be a threat to national security.

Overcome by the sheer power of my pink hair straightener, my travel converter clicked once and died on the first night in Paris. Unable to charge my camera or phone, I wasted valuable time racing up and down the Champs-Élysées, miming the act of plugging an electronic device into the wall. Each response was the same. Security guards and cashiers alike carelessly flicked their wrists towards the door, shooing me out with the single word, “Fnac.” In hindsight, I began to worry that I may have come across as an aggressive American threatening to stab employees with an imaginary knife. Then I stumbled upon Fnac – which happens to be an electronics store, not a French expletive. Seven days and several annoyed sales associates later, I found a replacement not in a shop but in the lobby of the Generator Hostel Barcelona.

I was so consumed by my mission that I failed to realize I was out of clean underwear until I settled into the small, Jack-and-Jill-style campground mobile home I slept in while in Antibes. There were only two washing machines, and one was broken. As a result the remaining one was constantly in use. I went back to the camper, determined to wash at least three pairs in the sink. My bunkmate found me rifling through dirty clothes, trying to find the laciest, most displayable underwear to line dry in the bathroom that connected our room to the other girls’. She asked me not to leave wet clothes laying around, citing her asthma as a concern. Ok, but you’ve left wet clothes hanging and a dry cycle costs €4. That’s more than a euro per panty, plus extra when you factor in the exchange rate. I didn’t bother getting into it; I bit my tongue. Since I only had detergent pods with me, I scrubbed my knickers with a mandarin guava shower gel I’d purchased at Target on a whim. When I returned to the laundry patio, a small child popped out of the lone available dryer, like a creepy human jack in the box, and that was a wrap for me. No way in hell was I going to spend €4 to subject my organic-mandarin-guava-infused intimates to a dryer that had just housed the filthy feet of a screaming child. Nope! I was back in France frittering away valuable time. I marched my way back to the bathroom and MacGyvered a clothesline out of a shelf, a length of cord, and two clips.

The minute I arrived in Venice, I sought out a washing machine. The laundry tides had turned, my clothes were clean, and all that was left was the dryer. How could things go wrong? Well, for starters, I could be €1 coin short, and have to walk a mile uphill to ask for change at the information desk. Oh, they don’t have change at the information desk, even though that’s where they sell Wi-Fi? I should go to the bar, you say? Ok. Oh, you don’t do change at the bar either? Well, fine, I’ll have a tequila sunrise, and can you please make sure I receive coins in change? I slid €4 into the dryer slot, pressed all the relevant buttons, and left. Little did I know, I would be back later only to spiral into a whirlwind of laundry despair. THE DRYER WAS BROKEN. It took my money – money that cost me a two-mile hike, an unwanted drink, a mosquito bite to the face, and a seat at dinner – and it didn’t do the only thing it was manufactured to do. You had one job, dryer! I lost it. I sank to the floor and sobbed until a kind tourist helped me up. Fortunately, one of the girls in my group came in to dry her bedbug-ridden clothes, so she offered to throw mine in with her load.

In the wake of my laundry struggle, I returned to the bar. All I wanted to do was get drunk, multiple U’s drunk, but it wasn’t in the cards for me. The person sitting beside me knocked into the table as he stood up, sending my drink into my lap. With nothing else to change into, I decided to go sit in front of the dryer and contemplate life as the clothes spun. Aren’t we all individual articles beaten down by the agitator of life? (Yeah. That’s where I was at, psychologically.) It was 1 a.m. before my clothes were clean, and as I set them down on my sleeping bag I realized I felt more homesick than tired. I needed someone to commiserate with me and I needed a laugh. Though I was nowhere near as intoxicated as my affected British accent suggested, I felt better after calling a friend.

I climbed the two wooden plank steps that led to the door of my cramped, mobile residence, moving gingerly to mitigate noise. As I bent down to open my suitcase, I heard a snore come from my bed. Assuming the roommate who walked past me as I was on the phone had accidentally gotten into my bed, I walked over to hers only to find her in it. I checked the third bed for our other roommate, and found her asleep as well. As much as I wanted a storybook vacation, I wasn’t expecting a Goldilocks experience. If they were in their beds, who was in mine?

Let me preface this by explaining that I am not a germaphobe. I’m non-confrontational. When you put your feet on my pillow, or touch my food when I know you don’t “believe” in hand washing – like, bro, it’s soap, not a unicorn – I might laugh along and agree that I’m neurotic, as I set the pillow aside to be torched or throw the food in the trash. Deep down I’m questioning your upbringing. So when I flicked the light switch in that little Venetian trailer home, and discovered a seemingly naked random dude curled up in my sleeping bag, it was too much for me.

“Hey. HEY,” I started clapping above his ear, “HEY, WAKE UP.” No response, except from my roommates. That’s when I noticed my clean laundry scattered across the floor. My. Clean. Laundry.

“Who is he? I thought that was you in bed,” ventured my soft-spoken British roommate. “I put the bin there by your bed because I thought you might be sick.”

I cap out at about 5’2 on a good day, whereas this dude was easily 6’ tall. No clue how she confused the two of us, but apparently she’d stood over the bed for a while in the dark, consoling this guy while he’d hacked up his lungs earlier. For a solid five minutes, the three of us stood there yelling at this possibly comatose stranger, while he continued to sleep off whatever had landed him in my sleeping bag. He looked like shit. If a sentient pile of excrement had a fairy godmother that could transform it into a nebulously human-adjacent creature, he would be the end result.

“Mate, you’ve got to get up,” she tried again. When he finally stood, ludicrously clutching my sleeping bag to his chest in an attempt to preserve his modesty, she asked, “Have you got any clothes on under there, mate?” He checked. He checked. As in, he was not sure and had to peek down into the sleeping bag to ascertain whether or not he was clothed. He offered a single drunken nod of confirmation. I stood there, quietly fuming, unable to speak. She continued to gently ask him where he came from, and if he wouldn’t mind please returning there. As if lulled by the suggestion, he turned to the door and carefully shuffled toward it, still wearing the sleeping bag. When she asked him to leave the sleeping bag, he became obstinate. No, he would not leave. Suddenly he didn’t know where he was, or where to go. I lost it.

“GIVE ME BACK MY SLEEPING BAG AND GET THE FUCK OUT.” I was beyond charity, the way my freshly laundered clothes were beyond the confines of my bed. He toppled out of the sleeping bag, and stood defiantly in his boxers. He seemed to believe that it was my civic duty to help him navigate his way home, though he hadn’t needed any assistance tearing through my belongings to crawl into my bed. “I don’t know where you came from, and I don’t care. Get out,” became my personal mantra, as I attempted to push his nasty sweat-slicked body over the threshold. All I could think about was the transmission of trichomoniasis through wet cloth, something I learned about in seventh grade health class. He clung to the doorframe, refusing to leave. In my mind, I was Chun Li seconds away from performing a Spinning Bird Kick. At nearly 3 a.m., the situation was too absurd. Tired, frustrated I’d have to spend €20 to wash my clothes and sleeping bag, and livid that my roommate hadn’t locked the door, I tried to comfort myself with the fact that the situation could hardly be more farcical. Then my roommate proved me wrong.

“Poor thing, he’ll be eaten by the mosquitos. Maybe we should let him stay? He could sleep just there on the floor,” she said, pointing to the tight space between our beds. For one infinitesimal moment, he slackened his grip on the doorframe to look longingly at the spot, like a dog invited in out of the rain. I seized my chance to get rid of him. Without a second thought, I shoved him out into the night like Uncle Phil evicting Jazz. Maybe they don’t teach stranger danger to children in the UK, but I was terrified by the notion that he could have forced himself on me had I chosen to go to sleep rather than call my friend. Personal safety is paramount; it blows my mind how negligent people are about locking doors at night. Aware of the bedbugs two trailers down, I chose to curl up at the foot of my roommate’s sleeping bag like a cat rather than risk sleeping on my exposed mattress.

I learned a few things about the world on this trip, but I also learned a lot about myself. While I am still objectively young, I am not carefree. 4,200 miles from home, with another 800 miles ahead of me, I finally understood that it doesn’t matter where you are in the world, you will always be yourself. Unless you’re clairvoyant, you won’t always be prepared for what happens, but I guess that’s part of what makes life interesting.